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20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

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Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#651

Post by BenjiWiebe »

nrclark wrote: post #613
ctrlp wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-check screening is the EZPass of the security state. Exchange your privacy for convenience. Submit to a background probe and permanent residence in a government database (and god knows what other consents are required) and you, too, can join the upper tier of society. Leave the filthy plebes and their shoeless drudgery and pat-downs behind you as you ascend into the clear air of the Verified(TM) elite. You pose n…

Don't forget that it also costs money. Nothing like a government-sponsored system to make life visibly better for those who can afford it. And - since it siphons line-space and machines - harder for everybody else. Sometimes I think that pre-check, toll-roads, and their ilk will take us all to the guillotine if we keep it up long enough.

At least in Kansas, the toll roads are not using tax money, so that's better than a government-funded TSA wanting more cash from you to make your life easier.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#652

Post by lotsofpulp »

corey_moncure wrote: post #647
GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

The CDC collects these statistics. You would find, for instance, that more black people die each year from falling out of bed than they do at the hands of cops while unarmed (Unironically, provably true; look it up before you downvote... ideally no innocent person would die during police interactions). Clearly, whatever motivates policy and politics has no resemblance to a proportional risk-based assessment.

There is no purpose in comparing those two things as one is self inflicted whereas the other is involves a second party’s actions.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#653

Post by simonklitj »

jedberg wrote: post #646
carabiner wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSA Pre requires fingerprinting and a background check. You definitely give up some privacy in signing up for it. I mean you can unlock some computer devices with fingerprints.

The government already has my fingerprints, because I had to give them to get a passport (edit: I've been informed this was only because I also did Global Entry) and also when I was in elementary school they fingerprinted everyone and also when I got my driver's license. Pretty much if you're a US citizen they already have your fingerprints.

Definitely! Or if you’re a green card/visa holder.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#654

Post by rspeele »

CountDrewku wrote: post #247
newswasboring wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a mountain worth of difference. The policies enacted for COVID have a very specific target, has been shown to work repeatedly, and deviating from them caused decline in the KPI its trying to maintain. Its nothing like TSA.

Ok then what's the target? Eradication of the virus is not achievable and neither is full vaccination of the entire population. I have yet to hear any hard numbers for removal of "safety" measures from any politician when enacting lockdowns/mandates. I think you're fooling yourself if you believe there's some hard target.

I'm not in charge of making public policy, but the target that makes sense to me is hospital capacity.

It seems that since COVID is highly contagious and not going away, we are all going to get exposed to it and have to fight it off with our immune systems eventually.

Being vaccinated to train your immune system before your first bout with COVID seems to greatly improve your outcome. In my state currently COVID is 15x more deadly for an unvaccinated person than a vaccinated one. So it made sense to try to limit the spread as much as possible while we were waiting for vaccines to become available, because the difference between "everybody gets it eventually, with no vaccine" and "everybody gets it eventually, but most were vaccinated first" is a significant number of deaths avoided.

Now that the vaccines are widely available and pretty much everybody who wants to be vaccinated, is, the only reason I see to continue with restrictions is to keep the rate of infection slow enough that the hospitals aren't overwhelmed and can continue to serve everybody who needs medical care (COVID or not). That threshold is being hit in some states in the US, so I can understand why some restrictions are still needed. Eventually I would think we will accumulate enough immunity from vaccination + natural infection that we don't have a hospital capacity problem anymore.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#655

Post by hunterb123 »

KittenInABox wrote: post #648
hunterb123 wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all what I said. The hospital isn't full. Show me a single hospital that is OVER or AT capacity. All the fear mongering articles say is the ICU is at 90%~ They are always around that number. Show me the percentage of covid patients in that ICU. Show me the normal number of the ICU. Worry about obesity if you want to stop the number one and two killers of humans and relieve our healthcare system.

Can you just go to r/nursing and read the 100x stories of nurses saying "I'm actually not an ICU nurse but my floor has been converted to an ICU floor" or "We have 4 nurses for 30 covid patients and I want to scream"?

Anecdotes on Reddit. Great source.

Don't believe anything you read on Reddit, especially anecdotes.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#656

Post by KittenInABox »

hunterb123 wrote: post #655
KittenInABox wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you just go to r/nursing and read the 100x stories of nurses saying "I'm actually not an ICU nurse but my floor has been converted to an ICU floor" or "We have 4 nurses for 30 covid patients and I want to scream"?

Anecdotes on Reddit. Great source. Don't believe anything you read on Reddit, especially anecdotes.

Maybe go to your local hospital and ask then among their own nursing social circles? They're the people who would have first-hand understanding of how full the ICUs are.

I'm not saying I believe everything I read on Reddit, but I know r/nursing is a longtime subreddit of mostly medical people and has a history of being as such for a long time. If I wanted to know what the actual medical field is dealing with day to day, I think a community with a history of being where healthcare people talk about what they're dealing with day to day is a pretty good bet.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#657

Post by jazzyjackson »

988747 wrote: post #365
bserge wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methodologies vary, but comparing deaths to any of the previous years, it is clear that they've increased. And the only major change was the new virus. But of course, never let a good chance go to waste. We'll see an increase in restrictions because of Covid, they're not going away anytime soon.

The major change, at least in my country, is that healthcare is so focused on COVID that they are neglecting patients with other diseases. So the excess deaths are mostly effect of that.

should they leave the covid patients in the hallways? whats the alternative? people dying from overloaded hospitals has always been the concern, ever since “flatten the curve”

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#658

Post by umvi »

GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

> We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths

It would be a highly controversial dashboard, I guarantee it, likely unpopular with both political parties.

The problem is that assuaging fear is often more important (to irrational people) than saving lives.

For example, guns. Very few people die because of mass shootings. Your chances of dying in a mass shooting are virtually nil. Yet, every time one happens there's a big frenzy to enact anti-gun policies. So you have all this talk of "bump stocks" and "ghost guns" and "assault weapons" and whatnot, but it's all just smoke and mirrors to assuage fears. The goal isn't to save lives. The goal is to assuage fears. I don't take any gun policy seriously that purports to save lives if it isn't focused on handguns and suicides.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#659

Post by xeromal »

edanm wrote: post #631
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are just fine at evaluating risk. It's just that the prioritization of the population is different than the prioritization of HN/Reddit/whatever. "People" aren't bad at stuff. On average, they're about average at it, which is tautologically true. People don't wanna die in a car crash or from covid but they want to die at the hands of others even less.

> "People" aren't bad at stuff. On average, they're about average at it, which is tautologically true. That is absolutely not true, at least not in the way anyone means. Humans are "terrible" at remembering numbers. The average-ability human has average ability, obviously, that is tautological. But as a whole, humans are not good at remembering numbers. A reasonable question is, what does "good" even mean? Well that…

I think you missed the point of the post you're replying to.

>People don't wanna die in a car crash or from covid but they want to die at the hands of others even less.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#660

Post by nmca »

GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

I think Taleb has a point on this topic - the concern is about a forecasted growth rate, not about the current rate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dKiLclupUM

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